Here’s my take on the modern office — a better place to do good work. It has Wi-Fi. It has AC power. It has a desk for working, and a couch for thinking. It has a view. And it’s always near the ocean or a place to go exploring. This has been my main office for the last year or so, and it’s my favorite place to do focused, solo work. I love it.
We recently made the Flipcase app. It's a game that uses the case of the iPhone 5c. Flipcase has been featured in Techcrunch, Huffington Post, The Next Web, TUAW, iMore, Cult of Mac, Polygon, 9to5 Mac, Macstories, & Gizmodo. I wanted to show a little of the process behind designing the app: from early sketches to a basic prototype to a working app in the Store…
Decoded is a tribute to a West African music artist called Fela Kuti, made during Music Hack Day in Sydney. The goal was to get away from the digital screen and make something that you could touch and feel. Data from several music APIs were converted back into analog form by making turntables, iPads, iPhones...
One of the things I love most about design is that it's all about helping people. It's about understanding what they need, and then finding the best way to help make that happen. Of course, doing this well is incredibly challenging, so I find it's really useful to have a framework, a set of design principles, to help achieve good design…
If you’re new to Photoshop and you’re designing UI or exporting assets for an iOS app there are some important settings you should use to get the best results. This is just a quick intro to some of the basic settings to help you get started. Beyond this point most designers will have their own custom settings that they like to use for UI design.
We've all run into performance issues when working with large UI documents in Photoshop. Luckily there are several settings you can tweak to get the best performance on your machine without compromising too much in terms of usage. Here are some of the most effective settings to boost your performance:
Raise your hand if you’ve ever designed a mobile interface while working on your desktop only to realise it didn't actually work on a real mobile device. Font size too small? Tap areas completely off? Not enough contrast? Yep. We’ve all been there. Designing mobile devices in isolation doesn’t work — you need to preview your mobile designs on a real device as you work.
Creating is like uncovering something that normal people can’t see. It’s our task to uncover it, to make it real. It’s our task to sweat, and to dream. It’s our task to uncover what we know is there beneath the stone. The people around you — they can’t see it. They’ll shout. They’ll disbelieve. But you can see it...
Most startups have trouble communicating who they are and what they're all about. That's normal — it's really hard to do. However, there's one easy way to improve how you talk: stop using startup jargon. Here's a quick list of common startup jargon, and some other words you can use to say the same thing…
Every developer on the planet has a strong opinion on whether you should adopt the native look of iOS 7 or if you should maintain an existing visual identity. Are you going to fit in? Or are you going to stand out? Both directions have a lot of advantages: marketing, biz, and design opportunities galore.
I'm fascinated with emerging markets like Brasil and Indonesia, and one thing I love is getting out on the street and seeing how technology has infiltrated daily life. I've just spent a week in Nusa Lembongan, which is a small island in Indonesia, and I saw some striking mobile patterns there.
I've just spent an hour with my kids messing around with The Human Body app by Tinybop. It's completely wonderful. Whether you're kid or a grownup, there is so much in this app. It's beautiful. It's playful. We got lost in it together.
Last night Mark Birch tweeted about a Brasilian song called Águas de Março by Elis Regina & Tom Jobim. The mention of this song triggered a massive flood of memories and feelings for me: a wave of intense saudade. When I lived in Brasil for a year, this was one of the very first songs that I was introduced to. Like the song 'Sampa' by Caetano Veloso, this song never left me.
My friend Lee passed away. When we were kids we adventured and explored through countless galaxies. Thinking of you Lee.
Maybe you're an engineer, or maybe you work with a designer. Maybe you think that design is what you do in Photoshop. Or maybe you just care about design. If any of these are true, then there's a lot you can learn by reading and understanding these books. They'll help you understand how to solve problems for people...
Ok, so I might have driven 15 hours from my hometown into the middle of nowhere to do a little loom storming as part of the recent International Yarnbombing Day.
There are a thousand reasons why Space X would never work. There are a thousand reasons why Mars Curiosity would fail. There are a thousand logical, rational, and completely correct reasons to not do anything at all. Problems. Holes. Issues. Edge cases. A thousand of them. Everyday. But seeing problems is...
Here’s a quick look at how we tackle UI and UX design problems in Discovr for iOS. One issue that’s been especially tricky was finding the best way to explain the gestures in the app. We’ve tried using several different ways of displaying ‘help’ information to solve this ...
We’ve been incredibly lucky to have such a great run of downloads for our latest app Discovr Music. I’d love to say that there was some magical marketing secret science that we used, but instead you’ll see that the tips in this post are really basic & often straight-up obvious. The trick is...